Located near the natural Pont d'Arc land bridge is the Chauvet Cave, a cave that contains some of the oldest existing examples of prehistoric paintings.

The cave was discovered in 1994 by a team of speleologists: Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, Christian Hillaire, and Jean-Marie Chauvet (for whom the cave is named). Hundreds of paintings exist in the cave, and at least 13 distinct depictions of prehistoric animal species have been catalogued.

Chauvet Cave is incredibly unique for many reasons. Not only it's age (presently thought to be 32,000-30,000 years old) but also the level of pristine condition of the artifacts in the cave. There are footprints from humans tens of thousands of years ago, and impressions from cave bears sleeping in the cave.

In addition, the artists who created the cave paintings had a unique level of mastery to their craft. Cave walls were cleared and etched, then charcoal used to create figures (with detail, shading and representation of movement) that seem to leap from the walls.

Benh Zeitlin, the co-writer and director of Beasts of the Southern Wild, was inspired by the renderings of aurochs in the Lascaux Caves.

One of the rooms in the caves, called the Great Hall of the Bulls, is dominated by four giant depictions of aurochs (the wild ancestor to cattle). One of the auroch drawings is 17 ft (5.2 m) long- the largest animal discovered so far in cave art.

On September 12, 1940, four teenagers and a dog stumbled upon a series of caves with nearly 2,000 different prehistoric drawings near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne.

The artwork is approximately 17,300 years old, and feature extinct animals, human figures and abstract symbols.

The Lascaux Caves were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1979. The caves were initially open to the public, but mold and damage from human exhalation and traffic threatened the paintings, so now only science nerds can look at the ancient art.